Reviews

My, utonulí by Carsten Jensen

jobatkin's review against another edition

3.0

A big book, with a long story spanning around a hundred years, with lots of different, loosely connected characters. I found the narration of it confusing, as it switches between 'we', and first person 'I' and also 'they' voices telling the story, but the stories themselves were great - full of adventure and variety. The book is set in Marstal, a shipping town on the coast of Denmark, and all of the stories are based on the men, women and children of this town as they sail the world and come home again. I found it too long and a bit dragging in parts, but it moved fairly quickly and explored each character in depth. Albert was my favourite, as he tracks his mysterious disappeared father (who rose up to Heaven and came down again, thanks to his boots) across the globe and finds him living as a native in Samoa. Along the way he inherits the shrunken head of Captain James Cook, escapes an island of cannibals, returns home and befriends a young boy and his mother, and has prophetic dreams of the war before dying frozen upright, standing in the same boots as his father. The rest of the story then follows the young boy, Knud Eric, right through WWII with some equally impossible and hair raising adventures. I think the overall tone was a little too depressing for me to really enjoy it, as each character is always grappling with an existential dilemma, but it had depth and variety and great scope, and I learnt more about Scandinavian shipping than I ever knew existed.

daisytudball's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional

5.0

the_library_of_ana's review against another edition

adventurous challenging slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

silvae's review against another edition

adventurous challenging reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Excrement, Vomit, Fire/Fire injury, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Ableism, Confinement, Fatphobia, and Transphobia

Minor: Suicide

pmnt's review against another edition

5.0

An epic tale about a small Danish seafaring town called Marstal and its wanderlustful sailor men, its strong widowed women, and the legends created over the hundred-year period between 1848 and 1945. This novel had me entranced from the beginning. There's always something about translated books that I find so interesting (see: Murakami). Its stories leap from one character to the next, overlapping like a strange and wonderful staircase. There is a portion in the book toward the 3/4 mark where it feels a little bit testing, but for the most part the novel spins its epic yarn fantastically. 4.5/5.

mojostdennis's review against another edition

5.0

popsugar challenge 2018: read a book set at sea

I was in the shower the other day, and I found myself idly wondering whether Albert Madsen would have approved of Anton Hay and Knud Erik Friis naming their gang after him, and I thought he probably wouldn't have minded, and then I remembered that none of these people are real.

My dad always says that you can tell a good book because you're wondering what the characters are doing when you're not reading. This time, I wasn't even wondering about the plot!

katrinky's review against another edition

5.0

I can't say enough good things about this book. This trip I took, and the recommendations for local authors I got, resulted in the addition of three books to my favorites-ever list. "We, The Drowned" is one of them. It's a 675-page epic following the life of Marstal, a small shipping town on the island of Aero, Denmark. Spanning 100 years of history, Jensen jumps from island to shipdeck to port to new island and home again, telling the gruesome, heartbreaking, beautiful stories that sailors live every day. The use of "we" lends every chapter but one (so far- I've got one more to go) an immediate sense of community, of a small town involved in everyone's business and privvy to secrets behind any closed door. Laurids Madsen, the man who went to Heaven and saw St. Peter's naked bum, Knud Erick, the boy who broke his mother's heart and became a sailor, Albert, son of Laurids, who had visions of sinking ships years before they sank, Herman, the Seagull Killer, Klara, one of Marstal's widows and Knud Erick's stalwart yet vulnerable mother, Vilhjelm, the stuttering boy who miraculously survives a horrific shipwreck- the list of characters I want to remember always could go on and on. This book made me gasp, gag, laugh, shudder, and stay awake for hours after turning out the light. I miss reading it already.

kelseybon's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This novel truly fits the category of an epic. Spanning a century and 4 generations, every one of its 700 pages is used wisely, and every word is important. It’s masterfully written, with incredible attention to descriptive detail, consistency, and immense character development that exists more in what is left unsaid than what is spelled out. Patience is required, but worth it; it’s not a book worth rushing. It captures the depths of the human soul across generations beautifully, tragically, and in brief glimpses, hopefully.

skello's review against another edition

adventurous reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated

3.25

wshier's review against another edition

4.0

East of Eden on water.